By Nantoo Banerjee
The long-drawn Ukraine-Russia war seems to be turning out to become the world’s largest and most expensive proxy war in the modern era, in which the European Union and the United Kingdom have so far spent nearly $300 billion on Ukraine to tame Russia. The Syrian civil war since 2011 may be the longest proxy conflict in the post-Cold War era. The Ukraine-Russia war since 2022 is a massive contemporary proxy conflict with Ukraine receiving extensive military and financial backing from the NATO allies, while Russia receives some material and economic support from partners like Iran and China. It may be of interest to those world conflict watchers that the ongoing Syrian civil war involves overlapping proxy dimensions with major external powers—including Russia, Iran, Turkey, and the United States—backing different local factions, resulting in over 528,000 deaths and millions displaced so far.
The EU and the UK together may not have spent the huge amount from their own budgets to assist Ukraine, but it is substantially linked with the total amount of Russian central-bank sovereign assets frozen by western nations globally following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Around $300 billion Russian sovereign funds have been immobilised globally. The EU controls the largest share, around $210 billion, primarily held in Belgium’s Euroclear. Allies are leveraging the billions in yearly interest generated by these frozen accounts to guarantee long-term loans for Ukraine’s military and reconstruction needs. The assets remain locked until Moscow pays formal war reparations to Ukraine, essentially keeping the funds out of Russian hands indefinitely.
On the other hand, the Syrian civil war is widely characterised as a complex, multi-layered proxy conflict because major regional and global powers—including Russia, Iran, Turkey, and the United States—intervened directly and through local factions to advance their own strategic interests. Russia and Iran provided vital military, financial, and logistical support to the Bashar al-Assad regime (with Iran deploying Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah fighters, and Russia launching extensive air campaigns starting in 2015). Turkey supported various anti-government and opposition factions (such as the Free Syrian Army) while military operations targeted Kurdish YPG forces in northern Syria. The US and Western/Gulf allies rendered backing, training, and equipment to select opposition and Kurdish-led forces (such as the Syrian Democratic Forces – SDF) while focusing heavily on counter-terrorism operations against ISIS. The conflict also mirrors overlapping regional tensions, including Iran versus Israel, Iran versus Saudi Arabia, and Turkey versus Kurdish groups.
The external patrons are believed to have been supplying weapons, funds, and air power. It may be noted that local factions and the Assad regime largely fought for their own survival and localized objectives rather than acting as pure, passive instruments of foreign capitals. The Syrian conflict shifted dramatically following a major offensive by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and allied groups in late 2024 that resulted in the ousting of Bashar al-Assad on December 8, 2024, altering the landscape of foreign involvement and internal governance. The Syrian civil war, running for over 15 years, involves overlapping proxy dimensions with major external powers—including Russia, Iran, Turkey, and the United States—backing different local factions, resulting in over 528,000 deaths and millions displaced so far.
The EU-UK sponsored proxy war, like most other proxy wars, is becoming difficult to end even though the belligerent parties – Ukraine and Russia – are in favour of reaching a conclusion. Actually, proxy wars are notoriously difficult to end as they remain at the mercy of external sponsors. The latter act as the principals supplying the money, intelligence, and weapons while local factions (the agents) provide the blood. The typical domestic thresholds for ending a war—such as economic exhaustion or heavy political fallout from troop casualties—do not apply evenly to both sides. External sponsors and local proxies rarely share identical objectives. The conflict sponsors view a proxy war through their own strategic lens, seeking to bleed a rival, drain their resources, or project regional influence. For them, a prolonged, grinding stalemate can actually be a “successful” outcome because it continuously weakens an adversary. This could be a reason why Ukraine, which is physically devastated by the Russian war, is not finding it easy to strike a compromise.
In the case of a normal war, fighting eventually slows down when one side runs out of money, ammunition, or fighters. Proxy wars tend to disrupt this natural culmination point as a continuous stream of external funding, training, and supply of heavy weaponry to keep the conflict boiling. Modern proxy wars frequently expand beyond two actors to include a chaotic matrix of multiple regional and global powers. The Ukraine-Russia war seems to have totally gone out of the hands of Ukraine president Zelenskyy. The trump card is now with US President Donald Trump, who was drawn into the proxy war by key EU partners of NATO. Lately, Trump has changed his stance to the disdain of the France-Germany-UK-Italy combine. Zelenskyy now faces a new challenge, the close possibility of getting removed as the Ukraine president if he continues to fight Russia at the behest of the EU big bosses.
Tensions between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and US leadership have intensified sharply, driven by disputes over US policy shifts, intelligence sharing, and military supplies. Relations with US President Donald Trump have hit a severe low following controversial US moves—including a deal to buy Russian diesel and pushback against Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries, which Trump publicly criticized as a “disgrace”.
The Ukraine-US relations are careening toward a possible breaking point, with Moscow strengthened by President Donald Trump’s latest rejection of new Russia sanctions and Ukraine undermined by disruptions in satellite support. Ukraine received no advance warning from international partners during recent heavy Russian ballistic missile and drone bombardments that targeted energy infrastructure and left multiple civilians dead. Ukraine has also faced critical shortages of Patriot air defence interceptor missiles and restricted access or speed throttling on military Starlink communication dishes. With its support sponsors divided, Zelenskyy may now find it extremely difficult to continue to fight Russia. (IPA Service)
